


Where the Heartache Began

by somethingvaguetodo



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff, a post-origins fic, beginnings of Marinette's crush, this could be considered crack but Marinette really is this way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 13:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14955497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingvaguetodo/pseuds/somethingvaguetodo
Summary: Marinette isn’t interested in Adrien Agreste. But its not that she isn’t interested in him either.





	Where the Heartache Began

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after watching Troublemaker. I could have written so many other things, but I chose to go back to the start of Marinette's crush on Adrien because I always wanted to write that. So this takes place in the days after the Origins episodes. 
> 
> The title comes from a lyric in Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man"
> 
> Anything you recognize does not belong to me.

Marinette paced the floor of her room, her new friend Tikki perched on the arm of the fainting couch, watching her bemusedly. “What’s the matter, Marinette?”

“I…” Marinette struggled to find the right words. “I don’t… do you… that is… do you think that Adrien understood that I forgive him? Not that he did anything that needs forgiveness! I was the one who rushed to judgment and… Tikki, I should have apologized to him!” Her breathing became shallow, and she was surprised to see her hands clenched into fists. 

Tikki flew up beside her. “Marinette, you need to take a deep breath.” She watched as her chosen sucked air in, her cheeks ballooning out comically as her eyes crossed with focus. Marinette let all the air out in one push, her body deflating. “Better?” Tikki asked. Marinette nodded. 

She bit her lip as she started pacing again, this time taking care to slow herself down. “It’s just I don’t want him to think I’m that kind of person, you know? One who assumes things about others.” Tikki was looking right at her, eyes wide and unblinking, and Marinette scrambled to think of the next thing to say. Adrien had apologized to her, but she was the one in the wrong. She could picture him clearly - standing outside the school like before, his eyes pleading with her to understand. Oh, how she wanted to understand. 

“I don’t want him to dislike me,” she finally whispered. 

Tikki looked at her sympathetically. “I’m sure that won’t be the case, Marinette. He wanted to make things better between you, he wouldn’t then decide not to like you.” 

Marinette nearly crashed into her dress form as an idea came to her. She righted the mannequin before turning to Tikki. “Maybe I can do something to welcome him to the school? That way he knows that I like him!” She backtracked quickly when she realized what she had said. “It’s not that I like him, like him, just that I don’t dislike him. You know, Tikki? I like him the way I like my other classmates, like Nino and Mylène.” She collapsed into her desk chair and spun around. “Although not really like Nino and Mylène because I’ve known them for years and I don’t know Adrien at all. But I’d like to! Just because I’m friendly. To everyone.” 

Marinette took another deep breath, watching as Tikki giggled but didn’t say anything. She already knew what Tikki thought about why Adrien’s opinion of her mattered so much, but that wasn’t the case. She just didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with someone new. What was wrong with wanting him to like her instead of avoid her because he thought she was nasty? Now all she had to do was come up with a welcome gesture that wouldn’t seem too over the top. Maybe invite him to have lunch with her? 

She pictured it, asking him, his smile when he agreed. Sitting across from him at one of the tables in the cafeteria. His long, nimble fingers wrapped around a sandwich as his bright green eyes glowed. Throwing his head back and laughing with amusement at something sharp and witty she said.

No, that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. 

“Do you have any ideas, Tikki?” she asked, choosing not to voice her earlier thoughts. 

“Hmm,” Tikki hummed, landing on Marinette’s knee and looking up at her. “Maybe you could bring some pastries?” 

Marinette jerked up, sitting up straight, but Tikki hung on. “That’s a great idea! That way I can share with the whole class and it won’t look like it’s just for him!”

With that, Marinette jumped up, headed for her trapdoor. Tikki followed along, rolling her eyes before zipping under Marinette’s blazer to remain out of sight. 

~~~

Marinette peeked into the classroom through the open door. Most of her classmates were already inside, including Alya, who was scrolling through something on her phone, and Adrien, who was taking to Nino. Her heartbeat sped up as she watched him, gesturing with his hands while he talked. She got lost for a minute, watching the muscles in his arm move beneath his smooth skin. It looked so firm, so solid. Marinette shook herself, glancing down at the box of croissants clutched in her hands and then further down at Tikki poking her head out of Marinette’s purse. Tikki smiled encouragingly.

She stepped through the doorway, making sure to be careful not to trip over anything. Thankfully, Chloé wasn’t in the room yet to stick a foot out and trip her. 

“Um… hi,” Marinette started, watching as everyone’s attention turned to her. She focused on Ivan so she was out of Adrien’s burning gaze. “We had an extra batch of croissants this morning so I thought I would bring some to share,” she smiled, glad that she was able to get through the entire sentence with the way that her heart was pounding in her throat.

She moved to lay the first one in front of Nino. “Woo, dude, you are the best!” Nino said, smiling at her. “Adrien, wait until you try one of Marinette’s dad’s croissants. I swear you will die.”

Adrien turned to look at her as she carefully laid a croissant in front of him. “Thank you, Marinette,” he said, his voice soft. Marinette forced herself to smile, the stretch of her cheeks unnaturally wide. She knew she had to respond, something friendly and causal to show that she was welcoming him into the class. 

“Welcome.” No, that wasn’t right. “I mean, you’re welcome.” That was better. Adrien smiled. “But also welcome. Like to the class. Because you are new. So welcome.” The wide grin was still plastered on her face, and she could feel her cheeks and ears grow warm. Great, now she was probably bright red on top of the manic grin. 

Adrien didn’t appear to notice her odd behavior. “I really appreciate that, Marinette,” he said, not breaking eye contact as he broke off a corner of the croissant and popped it into his mouth. Marinette focused on the movement of his jaw as he chewed. Did everyone’s jaws work that way? “Nino’s right, this is the best croissant I’ve ever had.” 

Marinette felt her face get warmer. She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out. 

“Hey, Marinette, some of us in the back are hungry too!” Kim called, and Marinette squeaked, jumping slightly and almost dropping the box of croissants. She adjusted her grip on the box before looking back at Adrien, who was still smiling at her. She managed a smile back at him, one that felt slightly more natural than before, and moved to put two croissants on Chloé and Sabrina’s empty table, keeping her head down so that no one could see how red she was.

~~~

It rained heavily the next day, forcing everyone to stay inside for lunch. Marinette sat with Alya at one of the round tables in the cafeteria, the raindrops pounding against the glass ceiling. Marinette busied herself with unpacking her lunch bag, listening as Alya prattled on about her plans for the Ladyblog. She pulled a shiny green apple out of her bag and took a bite. The sound of people approaching interrupted Alya’s speech. 

“Mind if we join you two ladies?”

Marinette looked up, the apple still in her mouth, and choked. Nino had spoken, but Adrien was hovering a step behind him. Alya started whacking her on the back, and Marinette had to use her hands to physically pry her jaw open, as her teeth were stuck in the skin of the apple. Finally free, she rubbed her jaw as she felt her face heat up.

“Marinette choking on her food is her way of saying, sure, have a seat.” Alya joked, and Marinette watched in silence as Nino and Adrien pulled out their chairs and sat down. Adrien had chosen the seat next to her, and Marinette forced herself to look away as he began taking food out of his bag. 

Instead she turned down, eyes on the leftover stir fry her mother had packed for her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Adrien opening a container with salad.

An awkward silence hung over the table, and it took Marinette a moment to realize it wasn’t just her. While she had known Nino almost all of her life, they had never really been close friends. Alya was just as new as Adrien was, and while the two girls had hit it off immediately, she had yet to see Alya talk to either of the boys who had joined them. Adrien seemed unwilling to start the conversation. He looked a little sad, his eyes cast down and watching as his fork pushed the pieces of lettuce around. Marinette wished he would look up, because he had nice eyes and they were nice to look at. That was the only reason. Maybe if she said something, he would look at her. 

“Alya blogs,” she blurted out. It achieved her goal of having Adrien look at her, but she didn’t realize that having Adrien look at her meant he was _looking at her_ and it was hard to think when he looked at her. For some reason. 

Alya saved her. “I do blog,” she said, slightly confused with the sudden topic but taking it in stride. “I started a blog about Ladybug and Chat Noir, and it’s been getting lots of followers.”

“A Ladybug blog?” Adrien sat up, his eyes sparkling with excitement. Marinette sighed a little, and then looked around furtively to make sure no one heard. “I would love to check that out! Ladybug is amazing.”

“I know!” Alya agreed. “She’s the coolest. She’s everything I always dreamed of in a superhero.” Marinette ducked her head further, shaking her bangs over her eyes. She was red for a different reason now, and regretted bringing up Alya’s blog. 

“…thinking about making a page dedicated to information about identities and then another page about the origins of the miraculous,” Alya explained. “I’m planning on doing a lot of research into it. Marinette was going to help me.”

“I was?” Marinette questioned. She could feel Adrien’s eyes on her even as she looked at Alya. “I don’t know, Alya, that seems like a big time commitment.”

Alya groaned. “You want me to do all that research on my own?”

“I mean, it was your idea,” Marinette answered. She shoved some food in her mouth to prevent her from having to speak for a while. 

“I’m not volunteering to do research, but if you need any help with html, I can give you some pointers,” Nino said. Marinette missed Alya’s response. Adrien was doing that distracting thing with his jaw again when he chewed. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. Marinette’s eyes almost popped out of her head. 

“I don’t think I really have time to help out,” he said. “But I can tweet out the link. My official Twitter has a lot of followers.”

“Cool,” Alya said, and Adrien pulled out his phone. Marinette could have kicked herself. She was supposed to be friendly - what kind of friend didn’t already check out their friend’s social media? She would have to find not only his Twitter but his Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram...

“It’s ladyblog.fr,” Alya said once Adrien had a new tweet open. “I had to pay for the domain name but I think it will be worth it.” Marinette watched Adrien type the message. His thumbs moved so quickly! He was _so_ talented.

She suddenly realized there was silence at the table and everyone was looking at her. Had she said that last thought out loud? No, they just looked expectant, like she was supposed to say something. “Um… what?”

Alya laughed. Adrien smiled and Marinette forced herself to focus. “I was just saying that those croissants you brought yesterday were amazing. Did you make them yourself?” Adrien asked. Marinette blinked for a moment, wondering how an entire conversation had changed topic while she was looking at Adrien’s thumbs. 

“Yes, make bake,” she said, before realizing that made no sense. “No, hake… that is help bake… that is I help my dad bake.” She enunciated the last few words slowly to make sure she didn’t tangle them. “All the time. Macarons, éclairs, gateaux,” she realized she was rambling and cut the list short. “Yes, I bake croissants. Those croissants in particular. Not all croissants. There’s a lot of croissants in the world I don’t have time to make them all.”

Nino looked shocked; he had never heard her babble like this before. She had never heard herself babble like this before. Alya had an eyebrow raised. Adrien looked a little confused but was still smiling. 

He was so good at smiling. No wonder people paid him money to do it. 

~~~

Marinette sat on the floor of her room, magazines scattered around her. Tikki hovered overhead, looking on. “Don’t you think this is a bit much?”

“No, of course not, Tikki, this is what friends do.” She flipped though the Vogue laid out before her. 

“You don’t have a collection of pictures of Alya,” Tikki argued, casting a wary eye to the pile of pictures off to the side. 

Marinette laughed. “If Alya were a model, I would do the same thing.” It was true. She wasn’t going through all of her saved fashion magazines looking for pictures of Adrien because he was Adrien, but because he was her friend. 

It just so happened that the new Numéro that arrived that afternoon had a large ad inside for Gabriel, one that featured Adrien with the Eau de Parfum. He was dressed casually, but gazing wistfully into the distance. He was so good at that. 

This sparked Marinette’s memory that she had a stack of old fashion magazines that she had saved specifically because she had found inspiration in them. There might have been pictures of Adrien all throughout those magazines, and she didn’t even know it! So far she had found six different advertisements, which she had carefully cut out and collected in a pile. Her favorite so far had come from last spring’s issue of La Mode, where he was leaping gleefully while wearing a white long sleeved shirt with the Gabriel logo and a pair of olive green jeans. He looked so happy, like he did when he laughed that day on the front steps. 

She finished flipping through the Vogue in front of her without finding another picture. She frowned - six was a nice amount, but she was sure she would find more. She would just have to buy more magazines. 

“See, Tikki, I’m looking for this one,” she said, leaning forward and grabbing her phone from where it rested by the stack of pictures. Marinette unlocked it quickly, opening Instagram and searching Adrien’s name. 

She smiled at his page. His profile picture was one she recognized; he was leaning against a railing with the Eiffel Tower behind him. She skimmed over the rest of the information. 

**adrienagreste**  
Gabriel model. Parisian teenager.  
gabrielfashion.fr  
1.2 m followers, 254 following

Under his information it listed his followers who she was familiar with. _Followed by princesschloéb, ninoooooooo, and gabrielfashion_

His Instagram page was a mix of professional and personal pictures. In between shots from his modeling career were pictures of cats he saw on the streets and of interesting foods he was eating. The fifth picture in was the one she was looking for. She tapped it lightly and turned to show it to Tikki. It was a close up of Adrien’s face, and he was looking somewhere off screen with a small, almost cunning smile on his face. The background was blurred, and a red filter had been applied to the picture, altogether making it look like something out of a dream. 

The caption underneath the picture read: _check out my new interview in 93Style!_ It had 465,724 likes. 

“I like the aesthetic of it,” Marinette commented, turning the phone back to face her. She studied the lines of his face – the slope of his nose and the curve of his jaw that she knew from firsthand experience did that very distracting thing when he chewed. His eyes were less green than they were in real life, which was really a pity, because his eyes were one of his most attractive features. Not that his other features weren’t attractive, because they were. Not that Marinette thought he was attractive, but she could acknowledge that he was conventionally attractive. To most people. Who have eyes.

“Why don’t you just follow him?” Tikki asked. Explaining the concept of social media to the thousand year old being had been a fun afternoon. “That way you can see his pictures all the time.”

Marinette dropped her phone. “Follow him?! Tikki, I can’t just follow him!”

Tikki frowned. “Why not?”

Marinette laughed. “Because so far the only person from school who follows him is Nino. And he and Nino are already pretty close, so it makes sense. I’ve only known him for a week, Tikki. There are conventions to follow when it comes to these things.”

“You humans are so silly,” Tikki giggled, the sound like ringing bells. She flew down and hopped on Marinette’s phone screen.

“What are you doing?” Marinette asked, leaning forward to look. When she saw what Tikki had done, she screamed. “AHHH, you followed him?” She buried her face in her hands.

Tikki giggled again. “You’ll see, it will be fine, Marinette. You worry too much.”

It took Marinette a full five minutes to calm down before she felt brave enough to pick up her phone again. When she did, she was filled with bitter disappointment. “He hasn’t followed me back yet.”

Tikki giggled a third time, which was getting irritating. “It’s only been five minutes, maybe he is busy.”

Marinette took a deep breath and nodded. She could wait until he followed her back. She busied herself with tidying up the magazines, putting all the old ones back in her inspiration drawer and the pile of Adrien pictures neatly on the corner of her desk. She checked her phone. Two minutes had passed, and no follow request.

Tikki gave her a look. Marinette took out her geometry homework and settled down to complete it. Five problems and five minutes later, she checked her phone. No follow request.

“Argh,” she moaned, giving in to her desires and calling Alya. She put her on speaker so Tikki could hear. 

“What’s happening?” Alya’s voice came over the phone.

“Why hasn’t he followed me back yet?” Marinette moaned. She collapsed onto the fainting couch, her head hanging off the side and her phone resting on the ground. 

Alya’s voice sounded surprised. “Who are we talking about?”

“Um. Adrien.” Marinette whispered.

“Oh,” Alya replied, unimpressed. “Maybe he’s busy. How long ago did you follow him?”

Marinette checked the time on her phone. “14 minutes ago.”

“Woah, slow down.” Marinette could almost hear Alya sitting up with rapt attention. “Why are you so desperate for him to follow you back?”

“Do you think he thinks I still don’t like him?” Marinette asked instead of answering Alya’s question. “Because that’s not true, you know. And I’m trying to be nice and friendly. This is what friends do. I followed you already, it’s totally not weird that I’m following him, right?”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” This time Marinette was sure she could hear Alya’s smile. “Are you crushing on Adrien?”

Marinette flailed and fell to the floor. 

“What was that?” Alya asked, her voice loud in Marinette’s ear. 

“Nothing, I just fell off the couch,” Marinette said, speaking from the floor. “And for the record, I totally don’t have a crush on Adrien. No-siree. Don’t know where you would have gotten that idea.” She determinedly ignored Tikki’s skeptical look from where she landed on the floor beside Marinette. “I’m being nice and friendly.”

“You said that already,” Alya was laughing. Marinette frowned. She went to speak but Alya talked over her. “What made you decide to follow him now?”

“Well,” Marinette began, and then paused. What was a good explanation for this? “I wasn’t even going to. But then his picture was in Numéro and, as it turns out, five other of my fashion inspiration magazines. But none of them were the picture that looks like a dream where his jaw is like it is when he chews. You know, that distracting jaw thing he does? I saw that picture on his Instagram and I… accidentally followed him 17 minutes ago.” She took another deep breath after speaking. She needed to get better at those deep breathing exercises.

Alya was silent for a while before bursting into nearly hysterical laughter. “I hate to break it to you, girl, but it sounds like you have a crush on him. What exactly is a ‘distracting jaw thing?’ Because I’ve seen him chew too, but I’ve never gotten distracted.”

“Um.” Marinette stopped herself from automatically answering in order to prevent another bout of verbal diarrhea. She had a lot to say about the distracting jaw thing. Probably enough to write an entire dissertation. “You know that thing where he chews and his jaw…” She trailed off. “Is it really not distracting?” she asked, her voice small.

“No, honey. But it certainly is if you have a crush on him.”

Marinette stayed on the ground, her stomach flat against the floor. She looked at Tikki, who was smiling at her, and then at her desk, where she knew that six pictures of Adrien sat in a neat pile. The truth that she had been trying to deny all week refused to hide. “Let’s say, hypothetically, I do have a crush on him,” she started. “What am I supposed to…”

She trailed off again, this time because her phone lit up beside her face, practically blinding her. She stumbled up into a half seated position to read what it said. “AHHHHHHH, Alya, it’s here! A follow request from Adrien Agreste!” She flipped herself onto her back with the phone held above her head. She stared at the follower request page on her Instagram. “Alya, he saw that I followed him and he requested to follow me back! That means that he looked at my profile. He has over a million followers but he wants to follow me back because he knows me in real life and he knows that I have seen him chewing and oh no, Alya, I have a crush on Adrien!”

**Author's Note:**

> Because I personally remember what it was like to be a 14 year old girl who suddenly lost all powers of intelligent speech in front of the boy she had a crush on. This lasted approximately 3 years. I feel Marinette on a spiritual level. Come chat on tumblr: somethingvaguetodo.tumblr.com


End file.
